There's nothing more romantic than watching a thin film of lawn-mowing scum dancing serenely across the surface of the apartment pool under the harsh glare of pale white security lights.

No wait, scratch that.

It looks like I'll be teaching the two trailing sections of Sightsinging I next semester. It'll be the same students I have now, but split into two groups so it should be fun. I'm looking forward to it.

I downloaded the theme song from the old TV show, Ducktales, which I used to watch religiously. Good times.

I've revamped the Music section and added a page for a new arrangement of God Bless America for brass quintet. I think I'm in the mood to write a jazz chart now.

What this site is missing is more cat videos.

Extended List Day: 36 Memories from Primary Education

Kindergarten

1) I remember very little from Kindergarten. I had Mrs. Lovo and Mrs. Wheatley in the morning session at William Ramsey Elementary School, which was just a couple blocks from where my all-day babysitter lived. I thought the school was cool because it had an attached nature center with a beehive in it, and you could watch the bees fly in and out.

2) As you can see from the above transcript, I was always destined for great things. From the age of 4, I could recognize my own name, recognize a thermometer as an instrument of temperature, march rhthymically, and show appropriate emotional responses. I don't remember if there were actually tests for this stuff, or if it was just day-to-day observation. I'm presuming for the last one, they hit me to see if I cried, and then dropped me in a pit full of snakes to see if I got scared. My one hiccup was during the first quarter, when I allegedly could not recognize a nickel. This is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things because no one uses nickels anyhow. Besides, this shortcoming is nullified by my "Mature" rating in the final category, "Copes with change".

3) My best friend was named Yunus Buluut who moved back to Turkey at the end of the year. The teachers said that we always took over the kindergarten sandbox, but I don't remember this. I had another friend named Gina who was a fellow Korean adoptee. Once, she wrote me a letter in which she said "I love you" so I wrote one back and my whole family made fun of me so I threw a tantrum and tore up the letter. I threw a lot of tantrums back then. Sometimes they would lock me in my own room until I calmed down.

First Grade

4) I had first grade with Mrs. McClung at James K. Polk school where I went for all of 1-6. It was two blocks from my house, but occasionally the mother of my sister's friend would drive us there (they lived one block away). We always thought the other first grade teacher, Mrs. Kundahl, was cool because she had a house in the woods across the street from school. Mrs. McClung had a card board with all the numbers from 1 to 100 that kids always knocked over, and I would have to hang all the numbers back on it in order, because I could count to 100.

5) I spent most of first grade sitting in Mrs. Uhler's second grade class, where I met most of the Polk crowd I would become friends with years down the road, like Michael Buns and Jennie Geisner. I was scared the first day because she gave a test and I didn't know how to subtract double-digit numbers. I used to play Gertrude's Secret on the classroom Commodore 64 every chance I could. I had no idea how to play the game correctly, so I just wandered all over the mazes. It was a game, and games in school were such a novelty. Then, I would go home at the end of the day and play the text-based game, Zork I, the first computer game I ever played.

6) My best friend was Jason McCabe who lived in Brookville. We took baths together when he spent the night, although I think we may have been too old for this. Everyone thought Jesse King was cool because he passed out class Valentines that were Origami swans.

Second / Third Grade

7) I was in Ms. Tutt's second grade class for one month. The only thing I remember doing there was creating an ugly paper maché bowl in celebration of Columbus Day. This bowl is still in my basement, filled with useless knick-knacks.

8) They jumped me into Mrs. Hutt's third grade class about a month into the year, because I had already done all the second grade stuff. Mrs. Hutt got mad at me because I didn't know how to read millimeters off a ruler and she thought she was expecting to get some kind of Little Man Tate. She always spelled my name wrong too.

9) Our Language Arts book was called Mystery Sneakers and had footprints on the cover. I took it home one day and read it all. I also read every book by Beverly Cleary, from the Ramona Quimby series to the Mouse and the Motorcycle. I didn't realize she wrote these books in the fifties and sixties until I was well into high school.

Fourth Grade

10) I had Mrs. Sharkey in fourth grade, although I also went to Mrs. Marmarino for Language Arts, Mr. Hazzard for social studies, and Mr. Cmiel for Family Life. Nowadays, I find it surprising that we were allowed to learn about Fallopian tubes in fourth grade.

11) My best friend was James Houck. His mom and step-dad were very much the archetypical yuppies, though I remember that they always had Coors Light in their fridge. I also had my first crush on a girl who I didn't really know, but who I would become friends with a couple years later (and have more crushes on throughout Junior High).

12) Social studies was always around 11 o' clock, and our lunch period wasn't until 1, so they always let us have snacks during class. I always had those gross fake Oreos that were vanilla wafers instead of chocolate wafers. They came in a variety pack, and my snacks alternated between those, toffee sticks, and Grandma So-and-So's Fudge Brownies. To this day, I recall Social Studies class whenever I smell those Vanilla car air fresheners, because they smell exactly like those gross cookies.

To Be Continued Tomorrow, because Kathy would kill me if I wrote anymore...

The Hospitality Rider

Some people might say that the greatest perk of being a celebrity must be the money, the fame, or the endless parade of groupies. In my opinion, the best part is probably the backstage contract -- the one that stays exactly what must and must not be present in the celebrity dressing room, no matter how ridiculous or hard-to-get the goods are. Were I a bona fide celebrity (and not just one in my mind) I would milk the hospitality rider for maximum entertainment value (after which I would take all the money and open an alligator petting zoo in South Florida).

This topic comes to mind after seeing the contract for Kevin Federline . If he can get 6 one-liter bottles of water that's not Evian by having no talent, then surely the rest of us are entitled to much much more! Here are some other interesting requests, taken from the Smoking Gun's archive of riders .

Dressing Room #1 for Kenny G should be equipped with large clean floor carpet, nice fresh flower arrangement with Japanese flair, two eight foot tables with table cloths and skirts, two lamps, two chairs, sofa, two tables, closet, or clothes rack with hangers, AC outlets, mirror, soap, twelve towels, shower and lavatory facilities with access to only Kenny G (that Kenny G must sweat like a hog)

Carrot Top will require the services of a female masseuese. All arrangements are the sole responsibility of the Purchaser or Promoter. Masseuse will need to provide the following: Massage table with clean sheets and oils. (I don't even want to picture this...)

One package of Soya Kaas Soy Cheese Full Fat Mozzarella or Cheddar
One bottle of Echinacea Capsules
One small bottle of Flintsones Vitamins with Extra Vitamin C
One small bottle of Chewable Vitamin C Tablets (Christina Aguilera has scurvy. ARR.)

Please Note All Beer is Bottled Beer!
1 Case Rolling Rock or a Local Domestic Bottled Bear
4 Cases Heineken
1/2 Case Guiness Stout
1 5th Cuervo Tequila
1 5th Stollt or Absolut Vodka
1 5th Jack Daniels Black
2 5ths Moet White Star Champagne
3 Very Good French White Chardonnays
3 Very Good French Red Bordeauxs
2 Mouton Cadet Red Wines
2 Jacobs Creek or Black Opal Australian White Wine
1 Medium Quality Port or Sherry i.e. Sandimint (I guess this explains why U2 can only remember two chords)

Four 150g Bags of Haribo Gold Bears Gummi Bears. Must be Haribo Gold Bears.
One 298g can of Campbell's Chicken with White & Wild Rice Soup (This is really killing Marilyn Manson's hardcore image)

1 Assortment of Adult Magazines (i.e. Penthouse, Playboy) (Slash is taking matters into his own hands)

Review Day: Drastic Fantastic

KT Tunstall's new CD, Drastic Fantastic, was released in September. Since her first CD, Eye to the Telescope, was one of my favourites, and stayed in my car CD player for months on end, I finally got around to picking it up. The CD arrived two weeks ago, and I also purchased the album as MP3s for $8.99 because I'm a yuppy and like supporting artists.

This particular CD is more acoustic and poppy than the original, but less acoustic than her aptly-named Acoustic Extravaganza. Weighing in at 39 minutes, it's a little on the short side, but the quality is quite high. Though the first couple listen-throughs were unimpressive, it quickly grew to be almost as catchy and enjoyable as the original. Below are a few song samples (greatly compressed) for your consideration.

The opening tune almost sounds like it should be crooned by Morrissey, and perpetuates two features of Tunstall's music that I enjoy: the back-and-forth between major and minor keys, and the ending of a song with a C section, rather than a repeat of the A section.

This particular song effectively highlights her accuracy of pitch. I've always been impressed with how her live voice is just as exacting and pretty as her recorded voice.

This is the song that was first released as a single which you've probably heard by now (It probably won't be long before it's in an iPod commercial). Some people compare it to Black Horse and Cherry Tree but I didn't like that song much. This one is far more interesting harmonically and rhythmically.

If the CD starts with a Morrissey tune, it's only fair that it has a Gin Blossoms-y tune too. Pleasant, harmless, and even channels a little bit of the Cardigans, which is never a bad thing.

This song highlights the lean away from blues and towards pop that permeates the entire CD.

A nice, mellow tune to showcase KT's lower register, which is just as rich as it was on her other CDs.

This song feels like it fell off of a Dave Matthews CD and landed here. It's not my favourite, but I would like it less if Dave sang it.

In my opinion, this is the only weak link on the CD, even though some people have said it's their favourite song. The tempo is a few clicks too slow, bordering near the "perpetual fermata" tempo that I hate, and she sings too many 9ths until they lodge in your brain like tiny machine gun pellets of timbre.

Final Grade: A- Give it a chance, and you'll end up loving it!

No Time for Updates

Have some babies instead.

Museday Tuesday

As part of this feature, which I started in 2007, I compose a very brief work (under 30 seconds) inspired by a randomly generated title from an online word generator or suggested by a reader. The composition can be for any instrumentation, and could even be a purely synthesized realization that might not be possible to perform in the real world.

I work on the excerpt continuously for an hour and then post whatever I've managed to complete, even if it could be the hit single from Glenn Gould Plays Tatu.

Whelked: (adj.) ridged like the shell of a snail

This excerpt is written for guitar, bass, brass, and harpsichord, with a piccolo echoing a few lines. The "snail" concept didn't play much into my inspiration, although I immediately gravitated towards 7/8 time for some reason.

Mike Day

Mike (of Mike and Chompy) says hi.

List Day: 6 Minor Disappointments

1. The final season of Dexter on DVD has arrived in the mail, but I am loathe to start watching it because I've heard that it is horribly unfulfilling.


2. Breyers Ice Cream now says "Frozen Dairy Dessert" in small print on the box because there aren't enough of the tasty ingredients to actually classify it as Ice Cream anymore.


3. I have been unmotivated to write open-source software for three weeks, although I have gotten a lot of video gaming in.


4. Someone on the street now owns one of those loud, yet physically unimpressive cars that you would normally expect to find on a Maryland country road killing spectators in a covert drag race. He warms it up for ten to fifteen minutes every day before driving away.


5. We have to leave for a weekend trip tonight during rush hour.


6. Alias, like Veronica Mars, doesn't hold up so well after years of improvement in television shows.

What is disappointing you in a minor way?

List Day: 10 Snapshots of a Decade

The sequel to this post about 1997

In November of 2007...

1. I looked pretty much the same as I do now, perhaps with about 4 fewer grey hairs.


2. I had been dating Rebecca for only about 8 months.


3. We went to DC an obscene amount, mostly to see shows like The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Avenue Q.


4. The price of gas locally had just cracked $3 a gallon for the first time.


5. I was doing Museday Tuesday, a composing exercise where I wrote 30 seconds of music in 30 minutes a few times per month. That month, I wrote Chichi.


6. McDonald's was rebranding all of its restaurants to look more hipster with less evil-clown red in the colour palette.


7. I hosted 3 separate Thanksgivings in the Thanksgiving basement, one of which was graced by Paige, who happened to be in town for a few days and stayed in the guest room (which is now the standing desk office). It was also the first Thanksgiving dinner to include a baby (Ella, at the age of 7 months).


8. I was working at FGM on the Metadata Registry v7.0, specifically on features that improved the storage of OWL taxonomies.


9. The Writers Guild of America went on strike, destroying many good TV shows (remember in season two of Heroes when Peter went into an alternate timeline and left his love interest there, never to be mentioned again?)


10. We were all still regularly playing poker in a year-long championship, and the Wii was still a pretty big deal.

List Day: 8 Minor Things I'm Thankful For

1. I have never had a food allergy so intrusive that it forces me to question the meals put before me.


2. I live in a neighborhood with an HOA that can't be bothered to interfere in anything.


3. I have never worked in a job with fixed start and end times.


4. I have a backlog of new shows to get through.


5. I have never needed to be in a hospital, except to visit other people.


6. The most negative thing that happens to me on a regular basis is when I open a yogurt and the pressure from the lid spatters yogurt on my dress shirt at work.


7. I have never lived in a place where I had to move my car in order to have guests park.


8. I have never been so poor that I had to buy paper towels that always rip off like this:

Easy Photos Day

Images from Maia's weekend at Grandma's

This 48 piece puzzle probably did not take nearly as long as the grandparents had hoped.

Riding an eagle while grandma tries to get out of the shot.

Always time for a good dig, even when it's 50 degrees outside.

Grandpa's new neighbours own two bunnies, Snowball and Waffle!

Recipe Day: Bacon-Wrapped Water Chestnuts

Time

• Prep Time: 15 minutes
• Cook Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 cans (16 oz total) whole water chestnuts
• 1 pound regular-thickness bacon (1 strip per 4 wrapped chestnuts)
• 1 cup ketchup
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• toothpicks

Directions

1. Prep (can be done anytime): Drain chestnuts and blot in paper towel. Cut bacon strips in half lengthwise, then half again widthwise. Wrap bacon around chestnuts and secure with toothpick. Place wraps on wire rack over foil-lined baking tray.
2. Preheat oven to 400 F.
3. Combine kethcup, brown sugar, and Worcestershire sauce in shallow, wide container.
4. Bake wraps in over for 20 minutes.
5. Coat wraps in sauce (back-and-forth dragging motion like a snow shovel works well) and return to oven.
6. Bake 20 - 30 more minutes, until bacon is crispy and sauce is caramelized.

Bacon is the most finicky part of any "bacon-wrapped XYZ" recipe. The best part about this recipe is that the water chestnuts retain their texture without ever overcooking, so you can focus completely on getting the bacon just right.

Review Day: Satisfactory (PC)

Satisfactory is the best game I've played in 2024 and will appeal to anyone who likes planning, digging holes on the beach, or Minecraft. It's a member of the "factory sim" genre, and plays out like a way-more-chill version of Factorio.

You play as the Pioneer, sent down to a pristine planet to harvest resources, mine ores, and send finished goods back up the Space Elevator (and in fact, one of your first major assignments is to build the Space Elevator). Your very first, simplest assignment will have you smelting iron ore into ingots and stamping them into rods and plates, while frantically chopping down enough wood to keep your electricity grid online. Assignments get more complicated at a steady, accessible pace until you have factories with dozens of machines, conveyor belts criss-crossing the world, and trains and drones carrying resources everywhere. Your power grid will evolve from simple biomass burners to automatic coal power plants to nuclear reactors, and late-game incorporation of alien technologies will take things in weird directions, with teleportation portals and volatile augmentations that spike your output while using exponentially more power.

The game is forgiving enough that you can play any way you want. You can choose to nerd out with paper and calculators to design a maximum efficiency factory or just wing it and build a factory that will get the job done eventually. You can load-balance your conveyor belts precisely to different machines or just dump the interim products on a conveyor belt and let it work itself out. Or, you can ignore the endgame entirely and be like the guy who built the Sydney Opera House from scratch in about 600 hours.

When you get tired of building, you can partake in some light exploration and combat (which is fleshed out enough to be engaging, but not so difficult that it's the point of the game). You might find rare resource nodes or mysterious artifacts that help in your factory. None of the major resources is limited and dying from wild beasts or a fall just respawns you.

The dopamine hits come from building something and making it work -- it's immensely satisfying to turn on a factory and see it start to spit out products from nicely-animated machines. It's equally rewarding to troubleshoot the emergent issues that occur when a factory isn't working quite right (this will be the more common case). Solving problems feels a lot like bug-hunting for software engineers and each playthrough is filled with AHA! moments, usually caused by earlier mistakes.

There's only a few flaws in the game: the controls can be a little finicky (and very rarely, buggy) but they're still way better than any of the finger juggling you have to do in Fallout 4 or Fallout 76. Also, the final phase of the game (Phase 5) feels a little underwhelming after the scaled complexity of Phase 4 -- where Phase 4 really felt like you had to learn many new things and run machines in parallel, Phase 5 can be solved with just a handful of serial machines. These nitpicks aside, Satisfactory is the only game that I've ever immediately started over (to try and be even more efficient with all the lessons I learned in the first playthrough). It will easily give you hundreds of hours of fun.

Maia loves watching me play this game and will choose it as a nightly activity over playing her own Switch games. She has built her own factories out of Legos and random items in our basement, and has become an expert helper in spotting machines that might be broken (based on the colors of their display lights or their animations). She's constantly creating paper diagrams of machines connected by conveyor belts and has learned the basics of pipeline fluid dynamics and how to calculate machine throughput. I can't wait until she has her own gaming computer and we can play together on a private multiplayer server.

Final Grade: A